How to use a USB cabled Palm-OS device as an external (20x4) character LCD display for your Linkstation using the [|PalmOrb] emulator

USB LCD | These instructions are essentially for a [USB LCD Display], a USB docking Palm-OS device can emulate a USB LCD interface so that no external adapter is needed. The same instructions could be used with some modification to add an LCD with the Articles/PPCSerialHeader

Method

Install [PalmOrb] on your USB cabled Palm-OS Device. The [v1.1a4] version has the most font options for a (20x4) emulated LCD, there are several other versions available on the [sourceforge site]. It emulates a Matrix Orbital LK204-25 LCD.

Install and remove LCDProc using apt-get (this should take care of any dependencies) The Debian Stable Version only has the LCDd Daemon program but not the lcdproc client, so you'll have to install lcdproc from a tarball. Kind of an ugly solution to get the dependencies resolved, but it works:

Run the LCDd (LCDproc Daemon) and LCDproc client with some options to see if it works.

LCDd &
lcdproc C M X

Hopefully you got some output on the Palm-OS device as an LCD. For other clients Google:lcdproc to see what other LCDProc clients you can find. Or just go here: [| LCDProc Site:Clients ]

What's the point?

Palm as terminal untested: Enable terminal access with this command: getty -h -L ttyUSB0 9600 vt100, and use a terminal program like [ptelnet]

Well if you happen to have a USB enabled older Palm OS PDA lying around and want an external LCD display for the price of nothing, now you have it!

Shell Scripts

#!/bin/sh
# lcdmon.sh
# Kill any LCDd that are running first, Start the Daemon and
# fork it to the background. Then run LCDProc with the Time option and
# fork it to the background.
# You can run lcdproc -? alone to see what options there are.
# Run another client: netlcdclient which gives U/Dl speed
# You could run this script at startup.
killall LCDd
LCDd &
lcdproc T &
netlcdclient -i eth0 -a LinkSTN -d